Take this hurting and write.
Write a poem for every detail.
Write a poem for every emotion, every memory, every thought.
Write lines and stanzas and poems.
Write poems and poems;
write enough poems to fill books.
Then, when this is over-
because it really does always end eventually-
it will feel like it was worth it.
That it was okay that you went through this.
That there was a reason for this trial
and maybe the reason was words.

I sit on yellow sand
and look across the purple sea
and watch a mute dance across the electric boardwalk.
We don't yell out to each other.
We don't cry for help or build a raft to find one another.
She is fine with her seagulls and I am fine alone.
Alone. Am I fine alone?
I like to think I am but the tide of
sadness creeps up as five o'clock draws near
and everyone else is fine.

That's how it is here.
Everyone else is fine.
You walk and you breath and you keep your head down
and no one asks if you're okay
because no one knows what it looks like when you're happy.
You eat alone and the empty chairs bring comfort.
You think about the colors changing on the mountains-
burnt orange, crimson red, baked yellow-
but you keep your romanticizing inside your head
because no one cares enough to listen.

You see someone one night, and they seem to care
but amnesia befalls them in the morning.
Glowing faces lit by electric tea lights
run by batteries and false hope.
A nose in a book never felt so wrong
and its hard to remember that
not even the clouds like to rain when the sun is looking.

One always misses neighbors and old people and babies in pews.
Or houses made into restaurants made into sanctuaries,
where jacked drinks are good and the service is bad.
One always misses going to the kitchen for a snack at midnight and running into your best friend that knows you because she gave you life.
Or spending Saturdays in the cool basement with the man that taught you all you know.
One always misses walking the streets without the fear of getting lost
or naming each house by the memory that comes with it.
One always misses when home meant family or when school meant people you knew by personality:
The hobbit that bled out equations, The girl next door and her nurture, The other half that is an art form in herself, the girl with hair like fire and humor like a drum beat, The Englishwoman from France that understood the ebbs and flows of life and always saw you better than you were, and mostly The boy up the street that makes you laugh and forget what you should probably remember.
One always misses having people that care.

So I sit here and write
and my name is one,
but I am not one at this moment; I am a million;
and nostalgia is a disease.

You.
You did this to yourself.
You cut yourself open and planted the infection inside of yourself.
This sickness is self inflicted so do not blame me for your muteness and deafness and vivid eyesight.
Maybe I'm just all too much like daisy
And you're all too much like Gatsby, and that's the problem.
Only with us there's no past to repeat and there never will be.
Tom cheated and myrtle died and Gatsby was a consideration because he flattered daisy and made her feel in control,
But Tom was always the past and present and future.
Tom was always.
You were never an option so don't get mad that I didn't choose you.
You created the ultimatum inside your head
When really, mermaids never even existed.
And neither did we.

People tell me that two years
is equivalent to the speed of a bullet train.
But I think they just say that
because they don't bleed when you're gone.
And 'cause they don't hear your name
when the wind whispers through the quakies.
To them, September is when
the leaves change
and the sun dims,
but when you hold me,
September is still too hot and should never be lonely.
People tell me I'll blink and twenty-four months will have
danced before my eyelids,
But they're just saying that
so I don't have to cry oceans at their doorstep
at one o'clock in the morning
because you were busy watching metal come alive.
And letters are good,
even though handwriting is bad,
but pen isn't the same as
hearing your voice breathe
'I love you'
or
feeling it in your arms.
Two years is a lot longer than twelve days,
and because of this
I know they are wrong,
And I have every right to feel like
I am drowning.

I love these ink stains.
These black splotches on the tips of my fingers and
the edge of my hand.
they are tattoos that tell strangers who I am.
And they tell me things too.
They tell me that I live.

Stay home after dark.
His heart touching her warm chest.
Looks of liquid sun.

His nocturnal eyes-
Dark sheets; Human Ache; All wrong;
I being his friend.